Authorities in northern Ohio say they a high-speed chase ended in the arrest of a 25-year-old man accused of kidnapping a 2-year-old boy and demanding ransom from his family.

Mansfield police say Charly Ray Ledbetter was arrested Sunday after being accused of shoplifting from a Wal-Mart store. Police said he ran from them before pulling over and giving up.

The Mansfield News Journal reports that Ledbetter was the subject of a search after he and his girlfriend allegedly took a 2-year-old child from someone they knew and demanded money or cold medicine – used to make methamphetamine – for his safe return.

Police tracked them to an apartment where the child was found safe.

The Richland County jail had no information about whether Ledbetter has an attorney yet.

Nigerian immigrants in Central Ohio anxiously wait for news about the missing group of girls taken last month at their school by an extremist group in Nigeria. The president of the Ohio Chapter of Nigerians in Diaspora, Solomon Aiyeru says Boko Haram is dangerous.

]]>http://wosu.org/2012/news/2014/05/13/nigerian-immigrant-group-has-hope-kidnapped-girls-will-be-released/feed/0Boko Haram,kidnapping,Nigeria,school girlsNigerian immigrants in Central Ohio are nervously waiting for news about the more than 200 school girls kidnapped in their homeland.Nigerian immigrants in Central Ohio are nervously waiting for news about the more than 200 school girls kidnapped in their homeland.WOSU Newsno4:06Kidnapping Charges Outlined In Brutal Police Reporthttp://wosu.org/2012/news/2013/11/14/kidnapping-charges-outlined-in-brutal-police-report/
http://wosu.org/2012/news/2013/11/14/kidnapping-charges-outlined-in-brutal-police-report/#commentsThu, 14 Nov 2013 16:35:13 +0000Steve Brownhttp://wosu.org/2012/news/?p=61711

Columbus Police have arrested two people after an alleged kidnapping incident that police say included sexual assault and pulling out teeth with pliers.

Columbus Police have arrested two people after an alleged kidnapping incident that police say included sexual assault and pulling victims’ teeth out with pliers.

A police report says Obryan Jones, 29 and Belynda Coffman, 23, kidnapped three people and held them captive inside a house on N. Harris Ave. for six to seven hours while torturing and sexually assaulting one of the victims.

Police say the torture included pulling teeth out with pliers.

Police say a search of the home yielded five guns and a large amount of the drug known as bath salts.

Detectives said they also found items the victims said had been used in their torture.

A coroner says the body of Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro has been claimed by his family as authorities continue to investigate how a man who was perhaps Ohio's most notorious inmate managed to commit suicide while under close supervision in prison.

A coroner says the body of Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro has been claimed by his family as authorities continue to investigate how a man who was perhaps Ohio’s most notorious inmate managed to commit suicide while under close supervision in prison.

Franklin County Coroner Jan Worniak says the family picked up Castro’s body Friday.

The 53-year-old Castro was a month into a life sentence for the kidnapping, rape and decade-long imprisonment of three women in his home when he committed suicide Tuesday night. The former school bus driver had been taken off suicide watch while in county jail.

Castro said in a videotaped FBI interrogation that aired on NBC’s “Today” show Friday that police missed many opportunities to capture him.

The Ohio Highway Patrol and the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections have launched separate investigations into the suicide of inmate Ariel Castro. Castro hanged himself in his cell at the Orient state prison.

Just months after Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight escaped from years of captivity in a house in Cleveland, their captor is dead. Ariel Castro was found hanging in his prison cell Tuesday night. The death has been ruled a suicide.

News of Ariel Castroâ€™s death brought international attention back to Seymour Avenue in Cleveland. Cuyahoga County demolished Castroâ€™s house last month, but news trucks still lined the street Wednesday.

And neighbors were trying to figure out just what to make of this latest development.

Jovita Marti, who says she knew Ariel Castro, was sitting on her porch with her mother across the street from his former address.

â€œHe tortured those girls for 10, 11 years, and he didnâ€™t even â€“ was in jail for four months. He didnâ€™t have the guts to stay, like, a year and suffer a little bit,â€ says Marti

Castro held Berry, DeJesus and Knight under lock and key on this street for about 10 years, until they escaped, with the help of neighbors, in May. Castro pleaded guilty this summer to hundreds of charges, including rape, kidnapping and aggravated murder for assaulting one of the women until she miscarried.

Around 9:20 Tuesday night, prison staff in central Ohio found him hanging in his cell from a bedsheet. About an hour later, he was pronounced dead at a Columbus hospital. The county coroner ruled the death a suicide.

Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections spokeswoman Jo Ellen Smith says Castro was alone in his cell, and that guards were instructed to check in on him frequently.

â€œRounds are required to be conducted every 30 minutes at staggered intervalsâ€¦the entire incident is under investigation,â€ says Smith.

The department and the State Highway Patrol have launched separate investigations of the death, with the departmentâ€™s review set to be finished at the end of September.

This is the second hanging in a month in an Ohio prison, and the ACLU is calling for an investigation of prison mental health services.

â€œAs horrifying as Mr. Castroâ€™s crimes may be, the state has a responsibility to ensure his safety, both from himself and from others,â€ says Brickner.

Castroâ€™s defense attorney Craig Weintraub voiced similar sentiments speaking with multiple news outlets, saying he had asked for a forensic evaluation for his client.

The plea deal prosecutors and defense agreed upon took the death penalty off the table in exchange for life in prison without parole plus 1,000 years. It was an attempt, lawyers said, to spare Castroâ€™s victims further agony and keep him behind bars.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty responded forcefully in a written statement to the news of Castroâ€™s death, writing: â€œThe man couldnâ€™t take, for even a month, a small portion of what he had dished out for more than a decade.â€

Back on Seymour Avenue, Eli Amos walks by with his wife to pay tribute, he says, to the victims. He says as a parents, theyâ€™d become more protective of their daughter knowing that women were missing in their community. And he says he was disappointed that Castro died without serving his sentence.

â€œI think they were doing whatever they could do to make sure he got sent away. The death penalty came regardless,â€ says Amos.

He says no matter how hard Castroâ€™s defense had tried to avoid death for their client, in the end, death and Castro found each other.

The women described horrific conditions in the home, which Castro turned into a jerry-rigged prison. One of his victims, Michelle Knight, spoke before his sentencing.

“He told me that my family didn’t care [about me].” Knight said. “Christmas was the most traumatic day,” she said because she couldn’t celebrate it with her son, who was a toddler when she went missing.

“The death penalty would be so much easier,” Knight told Castro in court. “You don’t deserve that. You deserve to spend life in prison. I can forgive you. But I will never forget.”

Castro told the court he is not a monster. Instead, he said he is sick and addicted to pornography. He said he didn’t plan the first kidnapping.

Castro also apologized to his victims, but he claimed most of the sex was consensual.

Castro received the life term for the most serious count, and he got additional time for the hundreds of other counts.

A plea deal struck last week spared him from a possible death sentence for beating and starving a pregnant victim until she miscarried.

The women disappeared separately between 2002 and 2004, when they were 14, 16 and 20 years old.

They escaped May 6 when one of them, Amanda Berry, broke out part of the door to Castro’s house and yelled to neighbors for help.

A Cleveland man has been indicted on hundreds of additional charges related to accusations that he held three women captive in his home for a decade and raped them.

A 977-count indictment filed Friday against Ariel Castro includes aggravated murder, kidnapping and rape charges. The murder charge involves accusations that Castro starved and punched one of the women while she was pregnant until she miscarried.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty says his office has yet to decide whether to make the case eligible for a death sentence.

The 53-year-old Castro, a former school bus driver, pleaded not guilty to an earlier indictment containing 329 charges.

Three women held captive in a Cleveland home for a decade are thanking the public for their support in a YouTube video.

Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight broke their public silence in the video posted late Monday, saying the encouragement of family, friends and the public has enabled them to restart their lives.

Former bus driver Ariel Castro has pleaded not guilty to a 329-count indictment alleging he kidnapped the women off the streets between 2002 and 2004 and held them captive in his two-story home.

He fathered a 6-year-old daughter with Berry and is accused of starving and punching Knight, causing her to miscarry. He was arrested May 6, shortly after Berry broke through a door at the home and yelled to neighbors for help.